queerbychoice | "If the American Population Had the Slightest Idea of What Is Being Done [to Afghan Civilians] in Th

Thanks to Frank Aqueno for this great link:

Noam Chomsky on terrorism - interview conducted September 19, 2001

"The US has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die, possibly millions. Let me repeat: the US has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. This has nothing to do even with revenge. It is at a far lower moral level even than that. The significance is heightened by the fact that this is mentioned in passing, with no comment, and probably will hardly be noticed. We can learn a great deal about the moral level of the reigning intellectual culture of the West by observing the reaction to this demand. I think we can be reasonably confident that if the American population had the slightest idea of what is being done in their name, they would be utterly appalled."
- Noam Chomsky

Please Note: The above comments are already outdated: Pakistan has now indeed obediently withdrawn all such aid. The World Food Program run by the United Nations estimates that 5.5 million people in Afghanistan (which is one quarter of Afghanistan's entire population) will starve to death by the end of this winter unless that humanitarian aid is restored to them.

"Killing Civilians: Behind the Reassuring Words" by Norman Solomon

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"What I am trying to convey is a sense of emergency. Is there time for our drawn-out form of criminal justice?"

I believe that in a time of emergency, it is more important than ever to do the right thing and not rush into making mistakes. The terrorists do want specific things from us, notably for our government to stop killing innocent people in the Middle East, and if we just kill more innocent people and we don't start making a reasonable effort to address those issues, then we are extremely likely to inspire more people to become terrorists.

"If queers had led the attacks then I would have no problem with queer profiling."

I would. Let me put it this way: a few days ago I was reading an interview, it was an old interview from the early '90s and it was in the book Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings by Gore Vidal. Anyway, Larry Kramer (founder of ACT UP and author of the excellent novel Faggots) was interviewing Gore Vidal, and Gore Vidal asked him at one point in the interview, "Why don't you just fuck Bush and give him AIDS, and say 'This will happen to the next President and the next and the next, until the government starts funding AIDS research sufficiently?'"

Larry Kramer answered in a way that shocked me. He said something like this (and I can give you the exact words if you want when I get home and have the book in front of me): "Don't think that we haven't thought . . . Bush has a nephew at the University of Pennsylvania. We've talked around some ideas like that."

You understand what this means, yes? Larry Kramer was threatening terrorist acts against an innocent person, simply because the innocent person happened to be the nephew of President Bush the First. Well, I don't support that. And yet, I do support everything that I've ever heard of ACT UP actually having put into effect, and I've been known to say very good things about ACT UP (and even Larry Kramer himself - he's an excellent novelist, at least) many times. Furthermore, my best friend was an active member of ACT UP New York for years, and met and talked to Larry Kramer in person there many times. So my best friend was a member of an activist organization whose leaders, or some of them anyway, were contemplating terrorist acts against innocent people.

If the U.S. government followed the same advice with ACT UP members that you seem to be recommending in regard to Middle Eastern "suspected" terrorists who we don't have any solid evidence against, then my best friend could be killed. But you better believe I don't feel that would constitute "justice." My best friend would never kill anyone; he simply shared the same concerns as Larry Kramer, without wanting to resort to such violent methods of achieving them.

And most importantly, perhaps: if any government were to execute my best friend, I'd not only be furious - I'd start wanting to kill some people in that government myself, and I'd be willing to die for that cause, just like the suicidal hijackers were. Of course, I don't believe killing innocent people could ever be my style, but you see the direction it all leads, and some people obviously, unfortunately, have much looser definitions of "innocent" than I do.

I believe that in a time of emergency, it is more important than ever to do the right thing and not rush into making mistakes. The terrorists do want specific things from us, notably for our government to stop killing innocent people in the Middle East, and if we just kill more innocent people and we don't start making a reasonable effort to address those issues, then we are extremely likely to inspire more people to become terrorists.

The issues that make people angry at us are completely different from specific negotiable demands or grievances. I'm not sure you understand my point. I have never disagreed with you about the fact that certain U.S. foreign policy conundrums have righteously angered and/or been manipulated to anger a slew of Middle Easterners. The problem with terrorism, especially this new brand, is that there are no actual concrete demands.

Not even the pretext of negotiation or responsibility. Not like the terrorism of old, whence hijackers would state "free our 57 jailed comrades!" and nation states would say "we need more time" while planning a commando raid. Nope. The new-style terrorists have focused talking points of hatred that they use to incite new recruits and spice up their home videos, but when it comes to anything we could actually do to make them stop--no dice. In their minds we've already gone way to far. There's nothing left but to destroy the infidel West entirely. From within. Playing all our strengths against us in asymmetrical war with no stated goals and no responsibility. Demoralizing us in a death of a thousand cuts.

The real Pandora's box of terrorism is a never-ending cycle of low intensity conflict. Terrorist groups that once had stated goals, such as Hamas and Hezbollah now exist only to disrupt the possibility of any actual resolution to their problems. The extremism feeds on itself, the dug in warriors don't know how to think or act outside of their box. What I'm trying to say is this: even terrorist groups that begin believing that they seek specific goals inevitably lose site of them and become entrenched in a hate so all-encompassing that they will not settle for anything less than the absolute eradication of their enemy from the face of the earth. Bin Laden has preemptively skipped the stage of faux demands. Unfortunatley, it seems, he's advanced the art of terror in many ways.

"If the American Population Had the Slightest Idea of What Is Being Done [to Afghan Civilians] in Th

Re: what do you think?

Re: what do you think?